Don Mischer, an award-winning producer and director who brought calmness and meticulous preparation to live television extravaganzas like awards shows, Olympic opening ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime performances and the 2004 Democratic National Convention, died on April 11 in Los Angeles. He was 85.
His death was announced by a spokeswoman for his family, who did not cite a cause or specify where in Los Angeles he died.
Mr. Mischer’s most recent project, on April 5, was serving as the executive producer of the star-studded Breakthrough Prize award ceremony, which honors scientists and is sometimes called the Oscars of science. In the days before the event, he told the trade news website Deadline that he would retire after the show.
When Mr. Mischer was hired as the executive producer of NBC’s telecast of the opening ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics at Centennial Olympic Stadium (later Turner Field) in Atlanta, he was entrusted with a secret known to only four other people: The Olympic cauldron would be lit by Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight champion.
As the ceremony neared its conclusion, Ali dramatically stepped out of the shadows, dressed in white, his body trembling from Parkinson’s disease. He took the Olympic torch from Janet Evans, an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, showed it to the crowd and ignited the cauldron.
“You can get emotion without going overboard with production,” Mr. Mischer said in an interview with the Television Academy in 2008. Referring to the type of showy elements typically used in opening ceremonies, he added, “Glitz and pyro and special effects and flying people, all that stuff is important, but you want to get people here” — he gestured to his heart — “in some kind of way.”
In Atlanta — which was selected to host the Games over several other cities, including Athens, where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896 — Mr. Mischer insisted that Greek imagery be part of the opening ceremony, said David Neal, NBC Sports’s coordinating producer for the Olympics. “He had backlit silhouettes of athletes posing like a living Greek vase.”
Mr. Mischer was the executive producer of NBC’s broadcast of the opening ceremony at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; the Primetime Emmy Awards, numerous times between 1993 and 2019; and the Tony Awards, from 1987 to 1989. He was also the director of the Academy Awards ceremonies in 2011 and 2012, as well as several Super Bowl halftime shows.
In his autobiography, “:10 Seconds to Air: My Life in the Director’s Chair” (2023, with Sara Lukinson), Mr. Mischer described the allure of live television: It was, he said, “a job that always demands total focus, a stress level that can be scary but is so thrillingly alive, it becomes addictive.”
Glenn Weiss, a producer and director with a résumé similar to Mr. Mischer’s, said in an interview that Mr. Mischer excelled both at calling shots live and at executing his detailed plans as a producer, staying even-tempered in the middle of a complex major production and dealing with talent.
The forecast for rain at Super Bowl XLI in 2007 at Dolphin Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium) in Miami Gardens, Fla., where Prince would provide the halftime entertainment, worried Mr. Mischer. Would Prince’s electric guitars short out, much less stay in tune? Would the Twinz, two backup dancers who would be performing in stiletto heels, fall on the slick stage?
When a downpour began shortly before Prince’s entrance, Mr. Mischer recalled in his memoir, he called Prince on his walkie-talkie and said, “Just want to give you a heads-up. … It’s really coming down now.”
Prince, he said, responded, “Can you make it rain harder?”
“He clearly saw the downpour as a personal challenge,” Mr. Mischer wrote. “It wasn’t going to stop him. I said, ‘OK, go for it.’”
Mr. Weiss, who was an executive producer of the halftime show, said in an interview that Mr. Mischer’s demeanor changed when Prince reassured him that the downpour would not be a problem.
“He picked up the energy from Prince,” he said, “and brought up the crew’s energy.”
Prince’s guitars did not malfunction. The dancers did not stumble. The rain created an ethereal, haunting look that Mr. Mischer could not have planned. Watching Prince revel in the rain, Mr. Mischer told several cameramen, “Get me real tight close-ups.”
Mr. Mischer won 15 Emmy Awards and 10 Directors Guild of America Awards, as well as the guild’s Life Achievement Award in 2019.
Donald Leo Mischer was born on March 5, 1940, in San Antonio. His father, Elmer Mischer, was the vice president of a life insurance company, and his mother, Lillian (Hoey) Mischer, managed the home.
Don was 9 when his father took him to a basketball arena in San Antonio for what he later said was the first live TV broadcast in South Texas. “I was riveted and could hardly contain my excitement, my curiosity, and my wish it would never end,” he wrote in his memoir.
Mr. Mischer graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1961 and earned a master’s degree in political science and sociology from the school two years later. The broadcast coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas inspired him to go into television, and he received a grant from the Ford Foundation that allowed him to work for a year at a public TV station in Austin, where he rose to director.
He left to produce programs for Saudi Arabian television. For about a year, beginning in 1967, he made what he called “soft propaganda pieces” for the United States Information Agency. He left that job to make political ads with the documentarian Charles Guggenheim.
In 1971, he joined WNET, the public TV station in New York City, to direct the second season of “The Great American Dream Machine,” an irreverent mix of short comic films, satirical sketches, investigative journalism and musical acts.
The program was canceled after that season, but he soon moved into an eclectic world of producing and directing, some of it live and some of it taped. He worked on the failed variety show “Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell”; entertainment specials featuring Goldie Hawn, Shirley MacLaine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Robin Williams and other stars; the annual Kennedy Center Honors; and the 25th anniversary celebration of Motown, on which Michael Jackson famously broke out his moonwalk while singing “Billie Jean.”
Mr. Mischer’s many other credits included directing President Barack Obama’s inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in 2009 and the 9/11 Memorial Museum Dedication in 2014.
Mr. Mischer is survived by his wife, Suzan (Reed) Mischer; their son, Charlie, and daughter, Lilly Mischer; two daughters, Jennifer Mischer and Heather Mischer Godsey, from his marriage to Beverly Meyers, which ended in divorce in 1989; two grandchildren; a sister, Terrye Mischer Kahoutek; and a brother, Doug.
He acknowledged that producing live television could be intense, but he usually remained composed. At the end of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, though, he got angry when too few of the 100,000 balloons that were to be released to celebrate the nominations of Senators John Kerry as president and John Edwards as vice president fell on cue.
In increasingly insistent language that was accidentally broadcast live on CNN, Mr. Mischer demanded that the balloons be unleashed. “All balloons, what the hell, there’s nothing falling,” he said, before emphasizing his frustration with a profanity.
He was embarrassed — in part, because the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer identified him to the cable network’s audience — and he found the incident hard to live down. When he and his company were vying for the contract to produce the opening ceremony of the 2007 World Games of the Special Olympics in Shanghai, he said, rival producers tried to use the incident against him.
But an official involved in the selection process was not bothered by what Mr. Mischer had said. In the Television Academy interview, he recalled being told how she responded.
“That was brought to my attention,” she reportedly said. “That’s the kind of guy I want on this show.”
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
The post Don Mischer, Master of Live Television, Is Dead at 85 appeared first on New York Times.
